Pirate Bay man arraigned

a staff writer, 17th April 2013

After holding him for six months without trial, a Swedish court indicted Gottfrid "anakata" Svartholm Warg on hacking charges.

Warg is better known for being one of the early Pirate Bay founders, which these hacking charges are not connected with.

Swedish prosecutor Henrik Olin said in a statement that Warg was involved in taking a large amount of data from companies and agencies, including a large amount of personal data, such as personal identity numbers of people with protected identities.

The Swedish news website Nyheter 24 said that Warg was indicted with three other co-defendants, and the four have been charged with serious fraud, attempted aggravated fraud, and aiding attempted aggravated fraud.

It might take until May for a trial to be sorted out in Stockholm. Oddly Svartholm Warg's defense attorney, Ola Salmasson, has not actually seen the indictment.

Nyheter 24 said that the first charge involves allegedly unlawfully using another person's username and password to search Infotorg, a well-known massive privately held commercial database of "private individuals, companies, properties and vehicles".

The second count involves a 2010 hack of Logica, a Swedish IT firm that contracts with the Swedish tax authority. In March 2012, Logica was hit by an online attack that resulted in around 9,000 Swedes having their personal identity numbers and names released to the public.

All this data is normally made public in Sweden, but there are cases where it can be kept hidden. The Swedish media is not happy about whether the data was genuine.

The third count of hacking, allegedly taking place between July and August 2012, accuses Svartholm Warg of unauthorised access of major Nordic region bank Nordea's computers. The fraud charges accuse Svartholm Warg of allegedly transferring and attempting to transfer money from Nordea to other unauthorised bank accounts.

Warg allegedly tried to transfer $900,000 to various accounts but only managed to move $4,200 belonging to a Danish trade union.